


Tell me, honey, was your heart at rest

by winterover



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Break Up, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterover/pseuds/winterover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-movie AU. Captain Kirk gets his ship, but Lieutenant McCoy doesn't make CMO. Now, under Starfleet regulations, their relationship is illegal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell me, honey, was your heart at rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alaria @ lj](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=alaria+%40+lj).



> Written for the mccoy_and_kirk Spring Fling fic exchange on Livejournal. Alaria requested UST and angst, and I went with her prompt "Bones does not make CMO, but a lower ranking officer and thus it would be highly inappropriate for the captain to have a relationship with him even though they both want nothing else."
> 
> Thank you to sullacat for the beta! ♥
> 
> Title and lyrics from Joanna Newsom's "Soft as Chalk".

***

  
_While over and over, rear up, stand down, lay round,  
Trying to sound out or guess the reasons  
I sleep like a soldier, without rest  
But there is no treason where there is only lawlessness  
Lawlessness_  


***

It’s nine in the morning, and it’s July, but you wouldn’t know it. The window shades are at 100% opacity and both occupants of dorm 93B are sequestered together under layers of blankets in a bed too small for one man, let alone two. But Bones sleeps on his stomach and Jim likes to pillow his head between Bones's shoulder blades, letting the sound of Bones's respiration lull him, so the bed isn’t a problem. Personal space has never really been a thing with them; they’d started shoulder-bumping each other the day they met, and worked their way up from there.

A PADD urgent message alert goes off, piercingly loud, and Jim startles awake in the darkness, peeking the top half of his head out into the cool air of the room. “No, shut up,” he mumbles.

“Mine or yours?” Bones says sleepily, without moving.

“Yours.” Jim reaches up with a groan and feels around on the bedside shelf until his fingers make contact with the blunt corner of Bones's PADD. It rings once again, shrill and insistent, as he picks it up, and he winces. “Can’t you change the message tone? ‘S annoying.”

Bones lets out a noncommittal grunt. “Never bothered. Don’t say it’s from Medical. I’m not legally allowed on-shift again until fifteen-hundred.”

Jim squints at the flashing message alert on the bottom corner of the screen, blue and almost blindingly bright in the dimness of the room. “It’s from Command.”

There is silence. Then Bones finally rolls over and reaches for the PADD, not meeting Jim’s eyes. He presses it face-down against his blanket-covered hip. Jim looks at his hand, the fingers spread wide over the plastic casing, and up at Bones's face, set and troubled. Something uneasy is stirring in his stomach, and it shouldn’t be. There’s nothing to be nervous about. He’s got his orders, and Bones will be on the Enterprise with him, his CMO. He’s the best there is. They can’t ignore that.

“Probably one of those mass messages about not breaking the mess hall synthesizers.”

“Bones...”

Bones shakes his head. “I’ll open it later. Not now.”

“It’s your commission. You know it is. Opening it later isn’t gonna change what’s in it.”

“Jim.” Bones's throat works as he swallows, nervous. “You weren’t at my hearing. They really weren’t impressed -”

“How could they not be impressed?” Jim says, incredulous. “You saved Pike’s life. You took over and ran medical operations during a massive shipwide emergency without ever having done it before.”

“I abused my medical privileges to get you on board, I took medication from the hangar infirmary without documenting it and I deliberately _made_ a patient sick -”

“Ha. Like I didn’t do all that shit I did? I still get to take over from Pike. Stop worrying. Please, open it.”

He does. And he doesn’t say anything. Jim nudges him.

“Bones?”

“I’m on the Enterprise.”

Jim lets out a laugh of pure relief, and tackles him into the pillows. “I _told_ you, man,” he says joyously as he butts his face against Bones's cheek like a cat, rubbing along his stubble before kissing him sloppily on the jaw, and it’s a moment before he realizes Bones isn’t reacting at all. “What is it?”

“I’m assigned to the Enterprise, but as a junior physician,” says Bones, without any inflection at all, still staring at the screen. “I’m graduating a full lieutenant.”

“But -” Jim scans the message, hoping Bones is just mistaken, that he’s so tired he read it wrong, that it’s addressed to somebody else or it was sent by mistake. But it’s right there, in plain white text. Lieutenant. Supporting medical staff. “You were gonna make lieutenant commander. You were supposed to be a CMO!”

“‘Your talent is undeniable and your accomplishments in the medical field are impressive,’” Bones quotes bitterly, lifting the PADD so the light from its screen flares up into his face, casting the creases in his brow into deep blue shadow. “‘However, taking into consideration recent events concerning the U.S.S. Enterprise’s emergency deployment and Cadet James Kirk’s unauthorized presence aboard, we feel that you do not yet possess the emotional discipline or impartiality necessary for the mentally demanding position of Chief Medical Officer aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise.’”

“Bull- _shit,_ ” Jim snarls.

“The man they have as CMO’s a Lieutenant Commander, and they can’t have another one serving under him.” After that brief flare of resentment, Bones's voice has gone back to what it was before, carefully even, nearly emotionless. “I know Mark Piper. A little bit. He’s older, over sixty - always thought he was gonna settle into a position at Medical and stay there until he retired, but...” He lets the sentence trail off unfinished.

Jim doesn’t really want to hear the end, anyway. He wraps his arm around Bones's waist and presses his forehead to Bones's cheek, closing his eyes against an outraged prickle of tears. He won’t do that to Bones, embarrass him and make him feel even worse with a childish display of emotion. But he can’t not do anything. “I’m appealing this,” he says roughly. “I specifically requested you. If they can make _me_ a fucking captain, they can sure as hell make you a CMO. You’re ten times more responsible and disciplined than I am. They’re not gonna make an example of you.”

“Jim, _don’t._ ”

Jim snarls in frustration. “It’s not right.”

“Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is. It’s not up to you or me.”

“I’m talking to Barnett. Right now.” He throws the blankets off and starts to sit up, but Bones wrenches him back down by the elbow.

“And exactly how ‘impartial’ will that make us look?” he hisses. “It won’t help, Jim. Listen. We haven’t exactly been that discreet. If you run off and start demanding promotions for me, it’ll look like...like entitlement at its worst. Bad. And I don’t want you to screw up your own future. They could still take your ship away for inappropriate behavior if they wanted, and that is not gonna happen as long as I’ve got anything to say about it.” Jim lets out a long frustrated breath at his words - sometimes, Bones can be so damn _rational_ \- and lies back down on his side. Bones's face, though a little sad, is resolute. “We’ll still be on the same ship. Five years, guaranteed.”

“You won’t be part of my senior staff. I won’t be working with you.”

“We can hang out on our off hours,” Bones says comfortingly. “We’ll see each other.”

Wordlessly, Jim takes the PADD from his hand and tosses it aside. When he rolls on top of him, grabbing one of Bones's hands and lacing their fingers tightly and reassuringly together, Bones makes a noise like a muffled laugh, or maybe a sob, free arm winding tight around Jim’s waist as he turns away and presses his cheek to Jim’s shoulder.

The next time Jim wakes, he realizes with a sudden sick feeling that he’s overlooked something, and rushes to the console to look it up, his blood running cold. When he finds it - Regulation 17.3, regarding fraternization among personnel - he has to read it over three times. It’s four pages long. And it states, among many other things, that “unduly familiar” relationships are prohibited between Starfleet officers of more than two rank grades apart in the same direct chain of command.

Jim is the commanding officer. He’s the top of all chains of command. And Bones, Lieutenant McCoy, is now three ranks beneath him.

He looks over at the bed, at Bones's tousled hair on his pillow and the way he’s clutching a handful of the duvet like he’s afraid to relax and let go, even in sleep.

***

Hours later, when Bones is already gone, Jim showers, shaves, carefully smooths his hair down, and dresses in his uniform - the gold shirt he would have worn on his normal scheduled deployment, had everything not gone to shit, with the single silver stripe of a lieutenant. They won’t give him his captain’s stripes until he’s officially graduated, and he should technically still be wearing his cadet reds, but he wants them to know he means business. The gold makes him feel powerful, and it’s a feeling he needs right now.

He marches into the main administration building and asks to see the newly-minted Admiral Pike, back on part-time desk duty already. Bones had complained about it to Jim last week. _Damn fool’s gonna re-aggravate his injury. But of course, we’re just doctors, not like we know more than an_ admiral _about recovery._

The administrative assistant sends him straight in, and Jim goes, head high, hands clenched nervously at his sides. Pike’s new office is large and airy and still pretty empty, but he doesn’t really notice any of that. “I want to know why McCoy isn’t getting his commission,” he demands unceremoniously, stopping directly in front of the expansive wooden desk. Pike, to his credit, doesn’t even blink.

“He is.” He waves toward the sideboard against the east wall, where a couple of trays are set up with the contents of a very respectable office bar. “Have a drink and sit down, Kirk. I’d recommend the ‘35 Glenlivet, if you’re a scotch man.”

Jim stares at his impassive face a moment, then does as he’s told. Pike has never invited him to drink before - during their advising sessions, he’d felt more like a schoolkid called into the principal’s office. He supposes this is a perk of his new status, but somehow, it feels wrong. Despite being called a man, he feels twelve years old again as he awkwardly splashes the scotch into a tumbler, sans ice. “Can I get you anything?” he says without turning around.

“I have water here,” Pike says, not bothering to conceal the touch of wistfulness in his voice. “I’m living vicariously through you.”

In more ways than one. Jim tries not to wince guiltily as he brings his drink over, sitting down in front of the desk this time.

“I expected you here yesterday, actually,” says Pike.

“I tried to keep quiet and take it, but - “ Jim’s hands tighten around the glass of amber liquid, and he feels his expression harden. “Can you tell me? Is this some sort of punishment? You _know_ Bones - McCoy - deserves his promotion, sir. He didn’t do anything worse than I did, or Spock. Why is Command making an example of him? Did he piss them off somehow?”

Pike shakes his head, the movement slight and careful. Jim notices that his hair seems grayer now than it had been just a month earlier, before all this. Or maybe it’s just the light. “I wasn’t on the committee that decides these things, Kirk. I was in a hospital bed, if you’ll recall. But if you want my opinion? No. I don’t think McCoy specifically is being punished.”

Jim lets out an incredulous laugh. “Then let him be CMO! Piper doesn’t even _want_ the job.”

“Listen, Jim.” Pike leans forward a little and rests his elbows on the edge of the table, steepling his hands. “This isn’t about what Piper wants or doesn’t want, or what you want, or what McCoy wants, or what I want. The facts are these. You’re a damn young crew, especially your senior staff. You’re twenty-five and they’re getting you up to speed in the most abbreviated way possible. Spock’s been a lecturer for the last two years -”

“Spock hasn’t spoken to me about any of this. I have no idea what he’s doing.”

“He will,” says Pike patiently. “Now, Scott may be a genius but he’s never served long-term on a starship before. Your chief navigator is _seventeen_. Your main pilot, chief communications officer and chief of security are all young and on their first tours. The crew I’d put together was fairly green, but quite frankly, I’m astounded Command even _considered_ most of the replacement personnel requests you submitted, much less accepted all of them.”

Jim opens his mouth to retort, offended, but Pike cuts him off. “That is not a criticism or an insult, it’s just a fact, and it speaks to exactly how much of an impact the Romulan attack has had on our deep-space mission rosters. Experienced officers are spread a little thin right now.”

“McCoy has experience heading up an emergency department in one of the busiest hospitals on the continent,” Jim points out. “Plus, he’s one of the most sought-after surgeons in Starfleet.”

“But the fact remains that he is a new graduate, he has never experienced deep-space travel, and, until eight months ago, his medical file still listed him as suffering from a flight and space-related anxiety disorder.”

“ _You_ chose him for _your_ sickbay,” Jim says, accusing. He can’t help it. Pike sighs.

“I chose him as a _junior physician_ under a commander who’d served twelve years aboard starships and had nine years’ experience as a CMO. A dirtside hospital is a lot different from a traveling medbay. Now, with such a young crew, Starfleet Command is of the opinion - and I agree - that the Enterprise needs an older, more seasoned officer on your senior staff roster to balance things out. Piper’s it. If Puri had lived, it would have been him. McCoy was never meant to be the Enterprise’s first CMO. Another, smaller ship, maybe, but not the Enterprise. Not yet. You understand?”

Jim can see that it would make sense to any sane and rational person, but it still pisses him off. He stares down into his glass. “Yessir.”

“Jim,” says Pike, and Jim looks up. “I know you and McCoy have been friends since you started at the Academy. But he _will_ be on your crew. You aren’t being separated. So are you here vouching for him solely out of some sense of outraged justice, or was there something else?”

Jim can’t prevent the flush of warmth that rises up his neck at what he believes Pike is implying. “Not entirely the justice thing, sir,” he mumbles. Pike’s expression is too knowing.

“Well?”

“You’re making me say it?” Jim says, eyes narrowed.

Pike takes a sip of water, rolls it around in his mouth, and swallows. “I can’t advise you on your options unless you come out with it,” he says serenely. “Legally, I’m barred from speculation or assumption about junior officers’ personal lives.”

All right. Fine. “Admiral,” says Jim, after a fortifying gulp of Glenlivet’s best that makes his head swim a little, “Dr. McCoy and myself have for some time been engaged in a not-entirely-platonic relationship, which with my promotion to captain and his remaining at the rank of lieutenant...appears to be a problem.”

“I see. Well, I have one option for you.”

“Sir?”

“Marry him, Kirk.”

Jim almost laughs. “ _Seriously?_ ”

“I’m always serious.”

“Marry _Bones?_ That is so, so not...wow. You’re really suggesting _I_ get married. Sir.”

Pike shrugs. “You ask, I answer. It’s what I’m here for.”

“Okay. Well.” Jim swallows the last mouthful of scotch, sets the empty glass down, and stands. “Thank you, sir, for clarifying a few things for me.”

“Not a problem. And remember, Jim...an effective commanding officer fully weighs _all_ of his options before deciding on a course of action.”

Jim doesn’t respond in words. He just sighs, gives a helpless shrug - Pike smiles - and leaves. He can still get away with that, for now. He isn’t a captain yet.

***

Jim takes Pike’s advice, and he thinks about it. And comes to a conclusion.

He’s sitting on the end of Bones's bed, and Bones is clearing out and boxing up the contents of his desk, and it seems as good a time as any to say it, because there really is no protocol for something like this.

“We could get married.”

Bones's head jerks sharply up at that, eyes widening in surprise. And, Jim thinks, noticing the way his shoulders have hunched slightly as if he’s protecting himself, wariness. He feels nauseated all of a sudden, and not in the way somebody’s supposed to feel when proposing marriage. There’s no joyous anticipation here. He kind of knows how this conversation is going to turn out, and in his mind’s eye, it’s a little akin to the result you get when you mix a groundcar with a brick wall.

“Married?”

Jim swallows down a tongueful of nervous coppery saliva. “The three-ranks rule doesn’t apply where the officers are legally joined,” he says, voice even. “We could do that. We’d have to share quarters, but the captain’s rooms are big and we’ve been pretty much crashing together most nights for a while now, so...”

“You’re not supposed to get married just so you can legally _crash together._ ” There’s a bitter edge to Bones's voice. Sharp, like he doesn’t want to keep the words in his mouth any longer than he has to. “It isn’t right.”

“So -” Jim pinches the top of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “So what? What’s right? I thought you were happy doing what we’ve been doing, and this is a way to _keep_ doing it. Starfleet doesn’t have to know _why._ It’s none of their business.”

“I know you don’t care, but this isn’t just one of your Kobayashi hacks, Jim. This is _marriage_. Jesus.” Bones steps away and begins noisily rummaging through a desk drawer, pulling out handfuls of odds and ends. “You’re supposed to say ‘yeah, this is it for me. I’m in love and I don’t want anyone else. For the rest of my life, I wanna see their goddamn drool-encrusted face on the next pillow over when I wake up every morning.’” Staring down into the drawer, he pauses in his motions, knuckles showing white on the edges of the tabletop, and Jim knows who he must be thinking of. Then he glances back over his shoulder, and his eyes when he does are just about unreadable. “Is that what you want, Jim? What happens when you really fall for some pretty thing, and I’m the legal obstacle standing in the way? I don’t especially feel like winding up with another divorce on my personnel file.” He slams the drawer shut and pulls the second one open. “Last fucking thing I need,” he mutters to himself.

What Jim should say is _but it is what I want._ He doesn’t, though, because his feelings are smarting from Bones's comments. ‘Some pretty thing.’ Like Bones has such a low opinion of him that he thinks Jim would just dump him and go flying after the first nice ass and cute face to stroll past his field of vision. They’ve been doing what they’ve been doing for two years now, and Bones still thinks he hasn’t grown up yet. He has no idea how Jim really feels. About anything.

Well, fuck it, then. Maybe the fact that he actually thought Bones might go for this is just proof that he isn’t mature or perceptive enough to be anyone’s husband after all.

“I’m sorry,” he says coolly, standing. “I didn’t realize you felt that way. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forget it.”

“Don’t go, Jim. I didn’t mean to...” Bones trails off, forehead furrowed.

Jim chews his lower lip. Then he sits back down. There is a long, fraught silence, neither of them certain as to where to go from here. Silences with Bones have never been uncomfortable before.

For lack of something better to do, he reaches over and picks up a little spongy transparent-orange ball from the heap of random shit Bones has dumped on his bed. When he squeezes it, it conforms briefly to the shape of the inside of his fist, like clay, before popping back out into a sphere. He remembers this - they’d been downtown one night, planning on heading back to campus, it had started raining, and Bones had wanted a compact umbrella from the vending machine outside the bar. The machine had made a broken-sounding _clunk_ when he’d popped the token in and pressed the button, and it had spit the ball out instead. They’d stood there half-drunk in the rain and Bones had sworn like a trooper and Jim had laughed his ass off, and they’d gone back inside and had another beer.

They hadn’t fucked that night. That was before, actually, back in their first year when the only ‘benefits’ that came along with the friends thing had been the study sessions and the drinking company, the conversation and the occasional off-the-record medical care.

It had been...really good. They’d had a great platonic relationship. Always had, ever since things had seemed to just click into place between them on that first shuttle ride out to California. Maybe they could do it again - be Jim-and-Bones, buddies, nothing more. Maybe losing the physical intimacy wouldn’t be so bad, and he’s just tying himself into tortured knots and stressing himself out for nothing. It isn’t like they could ever stop being friends.

“I can’t believe you still have this,” Jim says, trying to make his voice light, pressing in with his thumb to make the orange foam dimple.

Bones shrugs his shoulders as he sets a package of extra styluses on the desk. He doesn’t look at Jim. “Used to toss it around when I was thinking. Sometimes squeezed it when I got back after a day of dealing with morons. It stopped me from punching things. You can have it if you want.”

“Nah. You should keep it.” Jim drops it back onto the comforter. “You might need it aboard ship. I won’t have my crew getting into fistfights with walls.”

When Bones doesn’t respond, Jim gets up and walks over and touches him on the arm. Bones finally turns around, apologetic and earnest-eyed, wearing his most miserable upside-down smile. Jim’s mouth twitches crookedly in sympathy.

“Sorry. Really. Just thought I’d try.”

Bones nods, and covers his hand with his own, briefly squeezing Jim’s fingers. “I know. Five years in space, Jim. Both of us. I’ll always be around.”

“Of course.” Jim leans in and brushes the gentlest of kisses over Bones's closed, dry lips. Bones's eyes briefly flutter shut, like he’s conditioned to melt under the slightest breath of affection, chocolate in the sun, bitter but gooey-sweet underneath it all. Of all the pieces that make up Bones, it’s one of the most endearing in Jim’s eyes.

If he misses anything, it’ll be this.

***

Dr. Mark Piper is pretty much what Jim had expected. A spry, trim sixty-something with tufty grey hair, his businesslike manner is belied by a twinkle in his eyes that tells Jim he must be a good grandfather to the five kids whose pictures hang on the wall behind his desk on the twelfth floor of Starfleet Medical headquarters.

In light of this, Jim tries his best not to hate him.

“Admiral Pike tells me you served with him on the Yorktown,” he says, trying to make conversation like an adult, as Piper busily empties the last contents of his office into a small shipping crate. Unlike Bones, tossing things around in frustration and waiting to sort out the mess later, Piper seems to know exactly where he wants each instrument and tchotchke and datapad to go in the box, his movements careful and precise. Maybe this is what Command had meant about emotional discipline.

Piper had been headed for retirement, looking forward to a long easy stretch of Earth-bound duties and research. Though he’d volunteered himself for space after so many of his colleagues, prepped for a massive humanitarian mission to Vulcan, had been killed, it couldn’t have been an easy decision, and the prestige of the position notwithstanding, he must not be entirely happy about going back out there, into the unknown, under a green commander like Jim.

However he may feel, though, he’s being nice enough. “For a short while,” he answers, closing and securing the lid of the box. “That was his first command - good man, a very good man. It’s a pity he’s trapped in an office now, but he’s lucky to be alive, by all I hear. Ah, I knew I’d left something out - can’t forget this.” Piper hooks the polished wooden picture frame off his wall, wraps it in plastic padding and lays it into the box. In the frame is his medical school diploma from Yale University, printed on real embossed paper and signed in ink. Bones is old-fashioned like that, too; his paper diploma from Emory had always hung above his desk, and doubtless it’ll be coming along to the Enterprise with him. “Home is where you hang your credentials,” Piper quips, and Jim smiles despite himself.

“You sound like someone else I know.”

“Leonard McCoy,” agrees Piper, sealing up the box, and Jim stares at him. “If I’d had his talent at that age - at this age, to be perfectly frank. I’m looking forward to working more closely with him.”

“How did you know that was who I was talking about?”

Piper leans an elbow on the box and looks assessing. “I’ve noticed that same expression on his face when he’s mentioned you.” Jim lets out an awkward laugh and rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably, but Piper shakes his head. “No need to get embarrassed, son. Captain,” he corrects himself. “It’s a good thing to hold your colleagues in such esteem.”

“Yes,” says Jim, ashamed at himself for acting so blatantly _young_ in front of an officer technically under his command. “He’s a good doctor. The Enterprise is lucky to have such a great roster of people. I’m excited to get going.”

“I don’t blame you.”

He’s so decent. He’ll be a dream to work with, Jim can already tell. He doesn’t say a word about the meeting to Bones, though, because in some stupid way, it feels like a betrayal.

***

Jim takes a deep breath, straightens his shirt, and steps out onto his bridge.

All eyes turn to him.

“Dock control reports ready, Captain,” he hears Uhura say crisply from her station on his left, and he smiles at her as he moves by. She returns the smile, small but genuine, and turns back to her screen to inform dock control to begin launch countdown. Jim gazes around as he approaches the chair, at the bright faces of his bridge crew, nervous and excited, awaiting his first order.

Jim nods to the tall figure in Medical blue, standing a respectful distance back from the chair, as he passes. “Doctor.”

“Captain,” says Piper amiably. Maybe it’s tradition for the CMO to be on the bridge for the first flight. All Jim can think of is Bones down in Sickbay, pacing anxiously with the last neurotic vestiges of his aviophobia as he waits for the announcement that they’ve gone to warp. If he were here, Jim would smile at him, touch him to calm him down. Even a friendly slap on the back would help. But there’s no reason for medical support staff to be up here. “Lovely day for a launch, don’t you think?”

“Nice and black,” answers Jim, settling into the chair and staring out at the yawning star-speckled darkness of space. He thumbs the comm button in the chair’s arm connecting him to Engineering. “Scotty, how we doing?”

“ _Dilithium chambers at maximum, Captain,_ ” comes Scott’s tinny voice. Then, inexplicably, “ _get down!_ ”

 _Thanks, Scotty,_ Jim thinks, biting back the first laugh he’s felt in what feels like weeks. In front of him, Sulu and Chekov exchange a quiet snicker. “Mr. Sulu,” says Jim, prepare to engage thrusters.”

The door from the turbolift slides open, and Commander Spock steps out. Jim rises from his seat, unsurprised. Pike had been right after all - but it turns out the moment Spock chooses to talk to him is the moment they’re about to blast off. Jim would call it illogical, especially when he’s already known for two days that Spock had accepted the position, but he won’t bother saying that to the guy’s face. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?”

He offers Spock a little smile. “Permission granted.”

***

It’s easier than Jim had thought it would be, at first. For a week after they set out, he works himself to the point of exhaustion, personally checking over every department, running scans, familiarizing himself thoroughly with the systems, jogging the hallways and crawling and hauling himself through the winding networks of Jeffries tubes until he knows exactly which routes lead where and how fast he can run or climb them. He makes a point of talking to every crew member he encounters, trying to get to know them all personally. They’re impressed that he knows their names already, though he sometimes has to glance at their cuffs to remember their ranks; he’s spent a month poring over the crew manifest, memorizing faces and histories. He wants to be a good captain. He owes that much to Pike, and Starfleet. His dad. Himself.

He and Bones don’t see much of each other, except when Jim comes into Sickbay to look around on the first day. He’s seen Sickbay, and he’s met most of the staff already, but he greets those who are on-shift again anyway, M’Benga and Chapel and Badour. Bones is the last to come up to him, a lab coat on over his uniform and a box of sterile gloves in one hand.

“Dr. McCoy,” he says, grasping Bones's free hand in a professional shake. Bones's eyes have shadows of tiredness under them, but his grip is firm.

“Captain Kirk.”

***

They don’t see each other again for three days, except in passing. It just seems easier this way.

Jim can barely spare five minutes to sit down and eat, anyway. But when he sleeps it’s restless, alone in the comfortable double bed that is the captain’s privilege. He somehow gets his limbs twisted in the sheets every night, working himself in dreams into a nervous cold sweat and more often than not waking with a pounding headache. He tries jerking off to calm himself down before he goes to sleep, lying on his back and biting his lip as he stares up at the featureless gray deckhead above him. It doesn’t really work. His orgasms are sharp and empty and unsatisfying, the spatter of hot come across his belly making him shiver with something other than pleasure, and once he’s cleaned up and washed his hands and lain down again, he feels just as edgy as he had before, his muscles tense and cold.

One night, unable to get to sleep at all, he throws on some sweats and goes to the gym on Deck Four. When the door opens, he sees Bones across the deserted room, hair tousled and t-shirt sticking to his back with sweat, running on a treadmill like there are wolves after him. Above the hum of the belt and the thud of his footfalls, his breaths come harshly, painful-sounding.

Jim turns around and walks back to his quarters, deciding that he’ll get a head start on the next day’s admin work instead.

***

He and Bones run into each other at lunch in the mess hall a few days later, and it doesn’t make any sense not to eat together. After all, this is what they’d wanted - hanging-out time. Buddies. Nothing more. No problem.

“So the upgrades in the secondary bay are working well,” Bones says blandly, shaking some pepper into his bowl of pasta and stirring it around. Jim’s gaze is caught by the unerring movement of his hands, and when Bones lifts a forkful of food to his mouth, the silver tines sliding cleanly out from between his plump closed lips, Jim’s own mouth goes dry. He takes a hasty and messy swig of his coffee to distract himself from the memories racing unbidden through his mind; a drip of the coffee dribbles down his lip and his tongue darts out to catch it before it reaches his chin. In that second, he sees Bones's eyes drop to his mouth, then quickly glance away.

Buddies.

He knows he isn’t the only one. The computer tells him that Bones is in the gym just about every night. But he doesn’t know if it makes him feel better or worse.

“That’s good,” says Jim, ripping a hunk of his sandwich off and stuffing it into his mouth. “Supplies all there?” he asks through a mouthful of bread and chicken. “Nothing missing?”

“Nope,” Bones answers, stabbing some more pasta. “We actually have a surplus of low-grade analgesics. I dunno if they’re trying to tell us something.”

“Great. I’d better fill out form 3341-03.”

Bones looks up, brow quirking, and it’s just like everything is how it’s always been. Same old Bones face. “Form what now?”

“Paperwork if you’re missing stuff, paperwork if you have too much stuff, paperwork if you have the right amount of stuff. Forward me the numbers that are off as soon as you can.”

“Or we could just agree that I never said a thing. At the rate your crew is accumulating cuts and bruises, we’ll burn through those extra painkillers in no time flat, anyway.”

Jim smiles ruefully. “I really need to do the form.”

“Damn. When did you get to be so law-abiding?”

Bones is smiling back at him, in a proud way Jim can never quite recall seeing before, and it’s almost more than he can take. “Since I took charge of a giant ship and seven hundred people.” He pops the last of his sandwich into his mouth and washes it down with lukewarm coffee. “Probably better to do the paperwork than not. I don’t want them to have any excuse to criticize me or the way I run things. I think most of them are just waiting to pounce if I put a toe out of line.”

He hadn’t meant anything by it, but as soon as he says it he realizes he probably shouldn’t have. “Right.” Bones's gaze drops down to his meal tray. Like he’s suddenly afraid that some admiral is going to pop out of the wall and court-martial Jim just for sitting at the lunch table with a lieutenant he used to fuck. Like Jim had been accusing him of wanting something. “I’ll send you those supply numbers soon’s I’m done here, Captain.”

“Don’t -” Jim barely refrains from slamming his coffee cup down out of pure frustration. “Please look at me, Bones.”

He glances up, and Jim watches his expression shift subtly, from hurt into something tight and restrained. “It’s hard to sometimes,” he says, voice clipped. “I need to get back to Sickbay.”

“You need to eat.”

“I don’t have much of an appetite. See you later. Sir.” Bones slides out of his chair, picking up his hardly-touched tray to take over to the organic reclamation. Jim folds his arms on the tabletop and watches him go, and pretends not to notice the way the crew members around are staring.

He hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s fine.

***

The only times he and Bones get to work directly together are on trips off-ship. When they need a medic on the away team, just in case, it makes the most sense to bring Bones along - a junior doctor, fitter and better with weapons than the CMO, bigger and stronger than the kind but tiny Andorian doctor Shanav, and with more recent field assignment training than the scholarly M’Benga, who had spent the last several years on clinical research. The others are there to keep the home fires burning in Sickbay, as it were. But out in the field, Bones is his.

It’s sort of the only time Jim feels just a little bit mellow. Tramping through the forest, listening to the wind in the leaves, the crunch of sticks under his boots, Spock and Chekov’s polite, if somewhat stiff, chat about science on some level that’s about fifty light years beyond Jim’s comprehension, Bones a solid presence just off his left elbow, a known variable.

“Look, you calibrated it - here. It’s wrong.” That’s Lieutenant Bellamy, operations. “See?”

“I did not.” Jim looks back at that, startled. It’s Bones, but he sounds amused in a way Jim hasn’t heard from him in weeks. Bellamy flicks her red ponytail over her shoulder. She’s pretty. Almost too pretty, and she and Bones look good, standing next to each other, their contrasting heads bent over his tricorder.

“If it’s telling you the rock is alive, it’s not calibrated properly.” Pause. “Or it’s not actually a rock.”

Bones lets out a throaty bark of laughter, because apparently he only has issues admitting he’s wrong when it comes to Jim, not when it comes to good-looking women. The thought has Jim turning away, hands clenched against his thighs. He can see them already, her creamy freckled legs against his tan skin, fingernails leaving red welts down his back. They’re the same rank. No problem there. “I might’ve skipped this session in field tactics.”

“Clearly,” Bellamy says teasingly.

***

Jim sees them together in the mess hall, sitting on opposite sides of the table, close enough to be companionable but not close enough for intimacy - not beside each other where they could hold hands or whisper. He makes a comment Jim can’t hear, mouth twisted wryly, and she throws her head back and laughs.

As she busies herself with tearing her naan into pieces, Bones looks up, right over at Jim, like he’s known Jim’s been staring all along. Jim lifts his chin questioningly, and Bones wets his lips and shakes his head, once, before turning back to his food. Jim doesn’t know what that means. Stop looking? It’s none of your business? We’re just friends?

Bellamy leaves first, with a grin and a last inaudible comment to Bones. Bones gets up two minutes later, and while he’s returning his tray, Jim slips out the door and waits.

He’s weak, weaker than Bones is. And he’s jealous. And he’s angry at himself, and angry at Bones, and angry at Starfleet. If they could all look inside his head, they wouldn’t see the mind of a strong, stalwart commander at all. They’d see a lovesick, raging kid. That should bother him. But right now, he’s not of a mind to resist the desperately lonely urgings of his heart.

He catches Bones on his way out of the mess. “Follow me,” he mutters, not turning around to see if Bones is or not, but when he reaches a quiet computer alcove, Bones is there right behind him. Jim pulls him in, turns him, cages him with his arms against the smooth white wall, and Bones just goes like he’s made of nothing.

“I miss you,” Jim says, barely a whisper, staring into Bones's wide-eyed face.

“I’m right here,” says Bones, as if he’s clueless and Jim’s an idiot, but doesn’t even sound like he’s convincing himself. “Don’t do this, okay? You’re making it -” But it’s too late, because Jim is kissing him, and after a moment Bones is kissing back, his lips parting and their tongues curling together not frantically but warm and slow and perfect. Jim knows, even if Bones won’t believe it, that he’ll never fall for some other pretty thing, that Bones wouldn’t ever have another divorce on his record because even if he wanted to leave Jim wouldn’t let go of him, not like that ex who’d broken his heart and left him so afraid.

Bones makes a noise of protest against Jim’s mouth, and Jim pulls away, breathing hard, then changes his mind and presses his forehead to Bones's. “You _are_ right here. Don’t go again.” He bites his lip. “I love you, okay?”

“ _Stop_ it, Jim. This is what we decided, remember?” Bones places two hands on Jim’s chest and gently, but firmly, pushes him away, like Jim had known he would. “We’re officers now. Jobs before personal shit.”

“You could have said yes, and then we’d have both,” Jim says tightly, voice dropping at the end of the statement as two sets of footsteps echo up the adjoining corridor. He takes a step back, and Sulu and his beta-shift pilot Spinelli come strolling up the hall, good-naturedly arguing over something on a PADD in Spinelli’s hand. When they see Jim they salute respectfully, and Jim waves them off with a put-on carefree grin, and Bones nods to them, unsmiling. When he looks back at Jim, his eyes are furious.

“Don’t blame me for your case of blue balls,” he says, low and sharp. “We were _not_ in that kind of a relationship, and I wasn’t about to fake it just so we could circumvent ‘Fleet policy and get our rocks off. I thought you’d grown up, Jim.”

“How are you right now?” Jim says stubbornly, though he knows Bones is right, and it hurts to have the truth of his own failings flung at him like that. “C’mon, tell me, Doctor. Do you love your life? Are you happy?”

“I’m fine,” Bones says stubbornly.

“You’re a shitty liar, don’t even pretend.” Another crewperson walks by, greeting both of them politely as she goes. Once she’s gone, Bones grabs him by the arm.

“I’m not discussing this out in a hallway with half your crew wandering by eavesdropping on us,” he hisses.

“Where are we _supposed_ to discuss it? Should I make an appointment for a physical?”

“Jesus. You’re not the only one who feels fucked over here, you know,” Bones says, his voice rising in anger before he manages to get it under control. “We don’t even have anything to discuss. We talked about this, it’s done. Leave it al -” he breaks off, scowling, and Jim turns around to see Spock standing there, head slightly cocked.

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?”

Jim takes a deep, steadying breath, looking back and forth between his two officers. “No,” he finally says. Bones steps out into the middle of the hall, away from them, and glares at them both.

“I’m not gonna be the one responsible for you getting called up on fraternization charges, and you’re not gonna goad me into it,” he growls, uncaring of whether Spock hears him or not. “You’ve worked too hard, and you have this opportunity to prove yourself, and you are _not_ fucking it up. It isn’t worth it, Jim. Not for me.” He turns and strides down the hallway, misery plain in every line of body, and Jim feels like the shittiest person in the universe. Add that to the list. _Can’t keep his own fucking feelings in check, lets them run rampant and hurt other people’s in the process. Lies when he says he loves people, because if he really did, they wouldn’t walk away looking like that._

“Come with me,” he says roughly to Spock. “I need to talk.”

***

He brings Spock to his quarters, sits him down in a chair, shoves a drink into his hand, and starts pacing. He spills his entire sob story, and Spock sits there like a statue, eyes appraising, absorbing everything and making no comment.

“I would marry him,” Jim says, collapsing onto the couch opposite and rubbing the palm of his hand over his tired eyes. “I asked. He wouldn’t. We could have a legal relationship and he just - refuses. He wants it to be about love, and he doesn’t think I feel like that about him, but I do. I honestly do.”

“Perhaps it is an irrational and emotional result of his previous failed union,” Spock comments, like he thinks he’s imparting some great and astute revelation that Jim would not have considered.

“Perhaps,” Jim echoes, though he knows better than Spock that that’s exactly what it is. More than fifty percent of it, anyway. “I apologize for dumping all this on you, Commander. I know it’s not exactly in your job description.”

Spock takes the tiniest sip of his tea and puts the glass down on the table. “On the contrary,” he says. “The position of first officer, as one closest in rank to the captain and therefore the least inappropriate conversational partner, naturally entails a degree of emotional and intellectual as well as operational and strategic support. It is, in fact, ‘in my job description’ to surveil the psychological health of the captain and ensure that he is in an optimal position to command.”

Jim pauses. “And?”

“Regardless of any personal turmoil you may be suffering, you have shown no apparent decrease in efficiency.”

“Thanks,” he says, because that’s the closest a Vulcan ever gets to a compliment. “At least it’s only the inside of my own head I’m fucking up.”

Spock doesn’t have a response to that. He sits there, waiting, like he knows Jim has more to say.

“Some days I just wanna tell Starfleet to go fuck themselves,” Jim sighs, giving in. “He would have been an amazing CMO, you know, and none of this _shit_ would even be an issue. All this because of a couple stripes on my sleeves.”

“If your issue is with rank stripes, Captain...I would suggest you remove the shirt.” Spock stands, but Jim, too busy gaping at him, doesn’t. “As I am not particularly skilled in the finer arts of human courtship, I unfortunately have no further advice to offer.”

“Spock, you realize what you’re saying. Or what I think you’re saying.”

He puts his hands behind his back and regards Jim calmly. “I do.”

“And you know it goes against regulation. You’re my first officer, you’re supposed to be keeping me on the straight and narrow.”

“Our exploratory mission will last five solar years. And I have observed, from extensive study of human relations, that such a period of time spent alone is not healthy. If you believe the company of a particular officer is necessary to your well-being, and therefore the well-being of the crew at large, and you are both tolerably certain your work would not suffer regardless of the status of your relationship, then I believe Starfleet may be inclined to overlook such lapses in protocol. As long as they are subtle lapses, kept behind closed doors.”

“Even if it’s me. The guy whose promotion the review board spent four days arguing over. There are people who _hate_ me.”

“Enough to condemn you to five years of personal solitude?”

Jim frowns in thought, and Spock nods and turns to go. He’s almost to the door before Jim remembers something very interesting Spock had said. “Wait, you’re not skilled in human courtship? Then how did you convince Uhura -”

“She convinced me,” says Spock, straight-faced, looking over his shoulder. “Good night, Captain.”

***

Jim doesn’t change the next day’s away mission roster. He, Spock, Uhura, Masters, and Bones beam down into a forest glade, sunbeams filtering down through a thick canopy of blue-green leaves, the still air full of drifting brown seed pods. Jim catches Bones's eye momentarily, but Bones just looks down, fiddling with his scanner.

It’s too quiet. The native party - they still don’t know what this species is called; they’d said the Enterprise party hadn’t yet won the privilege of referring to them by name - had said they’d be at these coordinates to meet them and bring them into the city, but as they look around, fanning automatically out into the undergrowth in a standard exploratory pattern, they don’t see anyone, and nothing registers nearby on their tricorders but trees and harmless little forest animals.

“I don’t like this,” Jim mutters.

“Maybe they’re late,” Uhura offers, though she doesn’t seem convinced.

All of a sudden Jim’s tricorder goes haywire, the readings spiking spastically. “What the -” he manages to get out before a humanoid figure appears out of thin air ten feet away, the outlines of his body shimmering and solidifying. He is fully clothed in forest-blue, his face covered in a mesh-like mask, and he’s wearing a breastplate with something round and green and glowing in the center. None of the representatives they’d met two days before had been dressed like that.

All around them, within the span of just a second, more figures fizzle into existence. “Tell me who you are,” Jim demands loudly, and Masters turns and gapes, panic on her face.

“Sir, behind you!”

Jim only has time to turn before a streak of copper flashes in the light, and then his abdomen is on fire and he can’t breathe, he can’t move, can’t even reach for his phaser. A gurgle escapes his throat as the fire _twists_ in him, and there’s a hoarse yell, and then, thank fuck, there’s nothing at all.

***

Jim wakes slowly, groggy and his mouth dry as sand. He is vaguely aware of light on the backs of his closed eyelids, and a dull ache in the vicinity of his stomach, throbbing a little in time with his heartbeat and the soft beep coming from somewhere behind and above his head.

He remembers the blade coming at him, piercing his belly with an agonizing pain, driving in and twisting. _I must be on the good drugs,_ he thinks. _And I’m alive._

When he opens his eyes, the lined, concerned face of Dr. Piper is peering down at him. Jim tries to say “what’s going on,” but his throat hurts so much he only manages a dry croak. Piper shakes his head.

“Captain. It’s good to see you awake, but I’d advise you not to try and talk just yet. We’ve just removed the tracheal tube. Your lungs weren’t injured - it was just to help you through the surgery and the initial recovery period. You’ll be sore for a few days.”

Jim blinks desperately, trying to convey his questions. Piper seems to get it. “You were badly hurt, but you came through excellently. We’re expecting you to make a full recovery. Of course, Dr. McCoy wouldn’t have it any other way.” The doctor gestures to Jim’s right. Bones is there, sitting in a chair but with his upper body resting on the side of the bed. He’s asleep, mouth slightly open and drooling a little, and he’s wearing a short-sleeved scrub shirt, the kind the doctors wear for surgeries.

“He insisted on performing the surgery himself,” Piper says gently, his eyes flicking between Jim’s face, Bones's, and the monitor. He taps something into the chart he’s holding. “He refused to let anyone else’s hands near you, unless it was to follow his orders. I suppose I’d write him up for insubordination, if I were that sort of a stickler. How’s the pain? Blink, on a scale of one to ten, least to greatest.”

Jim blinks three times, so Piper administers a hypo of something that immediately makes him even drowsier, checks his wound site, adjusts the sheet over him again and leaves him to doze. Jim gazes down at Bones's head, and, as if Bones can sense he’s being watched, he begins to stir, and looks up, meeting Jim’s eyes just as they’re drifting closed.

“Hey, Jim,” he hears, far off in the distance, and then he’s out.

***

Bones is still cagey with him as he recovers. He isn’t unscathed himself - there’s a big, raw-looking pink patch on his forearm that screams of regeneration, but all Bones tells him, brusquely pushing his rolled-up sleeve back down, is that he’d just gotten cut, and all Piper will say when he asks is that it wasn’t too serious.

It’s Uhura, coming with uncharacteristic reserve into Sickbay one afternoon to visit him, who tells him what happened. That they’d inadvertently gotten caught in the crossfire of a civil war they hadn’t even been aware was happening down there, a faction they hadn’t yet made contact with assuming they were aiding the enemy. That they’d had personal short-range transporter devices - at odds with the more basic weapons they’d carried; they clearly hadn’t developed the tech themselves - and how Jim hadn’t had the time to dodge the blade.

“The one with the knife was trying to skewer it straight through you,” she says, sounding a little ill. “McCoy didn’t even go for his phaser; he physically wrestled the man off you. I’ve never seen anyone run that fast. He cut his arm on the blade trying to keep it from going any deeper, and then Spock stunned the guy. We managed to stun all the rest of them quickly - I don’t think they were expecting our weapons. One of them grabbed Masters, but she wasn’t hurt. The doctor was the only one injured besides you.”

Injured while physically defending Jim from a crazy guy with a giant fucking knife. God, Bones. “What happened after that?”

She presses her lips together, looking angry. “McCoy and Masters beamed back up with you, a security team beamed down, and Spock and I stayed to find out what the hell was going on. The party that was supposed to meet us arrived just a minute later, like they’d been watching from somewhere the whole time. When we explained that all the others on the ground were just unconscious, they - they started killing them right there. I think they were hoping we would do exactly what we did. Defend ourselves and incapacitate them. We tried to stop them, but it would’ve started something we weren’t prepared to deal with. The Commander made the decision to beam back up.”

Jim closes his eyes. “Fuck. I should’ve suspected something wasn’t right when they didn’t show.”

“You couldn’t have. It wasn’t your fault, Captain.”

“I know, I just...” He shakes his head. Loss of life is never an easy thing for him to accept, especially under circumstances like these, where - despite what Uhura may say - they _are_ indirectly responsible for it. “Never mind. This is not going to be a fun report to write.”

Uhura smiles faintly. “I imagine not.”

“Captain, your heart rate’s up,” says Bones, hurrying over with Jim’s chart in hand, where his bioreadings from the bed are showing up automatically. “Try to relax, you’ve still got a lot of recovering to do. We should let him get some sleep,” he says to Uhura, who nods as he ushers her out. Bones gives Jim one quick, pained glance before he pulls the privacy curtain closed, and Jim sighs.

Try to relax. Sure. He doesn’t remember the last time he was relaxed.

***

Piper lets him go a few days later, with a strict admonishment to keep off-duty and rest in his quarters as much as possible. Bones isn’t on-shift to stop him like Jim knows he’d try to do, so he gladly takes the opportunity to escape the beeping beds and bright lights. Though he hates to admit it, he is still tired and the site of the stab wound aches more when he’s standing up, so he mostly obeys Piper’s orders, doing paperwork at his desk and lying on the couch, taking short walks around the living area to keep his joints from stiffening up.

He’s working on some requisition forms when a familiar hand lands on his shoulder. “Lie down,” comes Bones's voice from above him. “You shouldn’t even be out of Sickbay. Dunno what the hell Mark was thinking.”

“He isn’t as paranoid as you are,” Jim says, watching Bones unload the contents of a medkit onto the desk. “I didn’t notice you come in.”

“Which says something about your state of exhaustion,” Bones retorts, helping him up. Jim can do it himself but he lets Bones, because this is the first time Bones has really touched him in a long time, and the feeling of his arm around his waist is even better than he’d remembered it. “Just lie back,” Bones says, plumping up some pillows for Jim to lean against, and handing him a PADD. “It’s best if you’re stretched out, not bending your body right at the stab site. The muscle is still healing.”

“Okay,” says Jim, watching the lines of his back and shoulders and his puckered brow as he gets Jim a glass of water, takes things from the desk, moves things around, anything but looking directly at him. “C’mere, talk to me.”

“You feel any sharp pain or warmth at the surgical site?”

“No.”

“Any dizziness, headache, numbness anywhere?”

“Only the way you’re _making_ me dizzy buzzing around all over the place,” Jim says, going for lighthearted but badly missing his mark.

“I’m not in a joking mood, Jim,” Bones snaps.

“Neither am I. Marry me.” It just comes out. Jim gives him a level stare, and Bones pauses in the act of loading medication into a hypospray. Then he clicks the vial in, doses Jim in the neck with the softest hand Jim’s ever felt from him, and sets it back down on the bedside table. He looks very tired.

“We’ve been through this.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Jim says, frustrated.

“No. I understand that it was fun, and it was what it was, and now we both need to think about our careers and stop dwelling.” Bones wraps his arms around his middle like he needs a hug but doesn’t trust anybody else but himself to give it. “Yeah, I miss it. Regular sex was great. I won’t lie. But we’ll get over it.”

“No. Bones, I miss _you_. I want _you._ I want you to drool all over my goddamn pillows forever, you get it? This isn’t just _fun._ ” Jim blinks, eyes prickling, and stares down at his knees until he feels Bones move away, and around, and crawl up onto the mattress beside him and lie down on his stomach with a sigh. Back on their own sides of the bed, Jim realizes, though the Academy dorm mattresses had been a lot more cramped.

He looks down to find Bones is gazing up at him, one dark eye half-buried in the depths of the pillow and his right hand resting by his chin, fingers curled, vulnerable. Jim slides his own hand under it and holds on tight, thumb stroking over Bones's knuckles. “I don’t know how to make you see that,” Jim whispers. “I know I haven’t done a very good job.”

Bones closes his eyes. “You have to tell me again,” he says, and Jim knows what to do.

“I love you, Bones. You idiot. I’d never leave you.” He swallows hard. “And I won’t let it go, not even if you get promoted to fucking admiral and start commanding _me._ ”

Quiet as it is, he hears Bones's breath catch in his throat a little.

“This is how it is,” Jim whispers. “So we find a way to deal. Command 101.”

He draws Bones's hand up onto his belly and holds on, and Bones spreads his fingers out over Jim’s bandages, warm and protecting. His eyes are squeezed shut, but he’s still here, and Jim couldn’t ask for anything else. 

“I’ll think about it,” Bones murmurs, and Jim smiles.

  
end.  



End file.
